Barry Bergman
Praise for Proles:
“A vivid debut … a tough-minded meditation on politics, delusion, and survival in Nixon’s America.”
—California magazine
“A humorous, weary, dark, and oddly tender portrait of a man who wants to join history and instead finds himself crushed beneath its machinery.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Bergman traces a world attentive to labor, place, and the quiet desire for meaning.... [Proles] lives in the external rather than the internal, a choice he handles with remarkable control.”
—Independent Book Review
“In Bergman’s thoughtful bildungsroman Proles ... a young man’s lofty ideals give way beneath the quiet force of lived experience.”
I—Foreword Clarion Review
“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles.”
—George Orwell, 1984
Get to know me:
an interview with the author, by the author (tough, but fair)
A few words from, and about, Proles …
(Reading at Book Passage, Corte Madera, California, Nov. 8, 2025)
Video: Liza Gross
Photo: Lowry McFerrin